


revolution's shadow

by dabblingDilettante



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Only you will do.</i>  Nanami ripped the poster from the wall.  <i>Come see the Shadow Girl Players today!</i>  She had class to attend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	revolution's shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [resistate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/gifts).



"Did you hear?"

The only sound in Nanami's mind was her heels clicking along the path to the end of high school.  She had practiced her entire life to stroll down the red carpet of this single year and she would revel in it.

"The student council is shutting down!"

Curls bounced against her ears, fresh cut. She wouldn't make her brother's foolish mistakes, nor any akin to certain other seniors she'd long since forgotten. Long hair was out of style, to begin with. For a revolutionary young woman like her, chopping away all the dead weight as she walked forward wasn't only useful, but fashionable. Anyone with sense on campus would follow her example.

"No one's willing to take up the presidency, apparently."

She waved to any girls who stood in shadow, granting the grace of her dainty smile, the quiet threat of the food chain. Perhaps she'd throw a party to introduce them to the new school year. There were many rules to learn before Ohtori was survivable. New students needed to learn their place in the world. And - she was too soft, even now. The foolish youth needed some kind of senior in their lives.  Even if they believed themselves safe.

"Kiryuu didn't leap to take the reins?"

Petals spun along with the wind as she paused - around her, of course, and it would have been perfect if Ohtori had seen fit to plant the proper cherry trees at this school. She brushed away the yellows and reds of former roses. It was so annoying. There were some things she had long-since learned to overlook, but that had not made the private irritations any less of a thorn in her side.

"Her?" Voices bounced off an ever-greener glass cage, always present at the corner of her eye. "She quit years ago, don't you remember?" No matter how many weeds slinked their way up and out the thinnest gaps of glass and metal, some flowers went on surviving. "Why would they ask someone like her to lead, anyway?"

Nanami paused at a familiar board, fraying posters, old letters, the last reminder of generations of people who came shouting in measured silence and paperwork layered over one another in an endless cacophony. Someone like her had no need to bother with such affairs.

"I was _kidding._ I can't imagine what our school would be like if that girl was at the head of anything so important."

Old habits were hard to kick - she harrumphed at the fliers for groups that could hardly be called organizations littering every border. Rules existed for a reason, and a proper club needed at least five people, no matter what it was for. No matter how tantalizing their tag-lines may have been.

"Wait." Voices rang exactly the same, the question of who had spoken unimportant and unnecessary. "What?" The only person in this hall was her. "Why did we have a student council in the first place if it can be dissolved so easily?"

 _Only you will do._ Nanami ripped the poster from the wall. _Come see the Shadow Girl Players today!_ She had class to attend.

 

\--

 

"You came!" one voice pronounced, till another, "Someone came?"

Her eyes wandered - there was more to see in their silhouettes than in sleek faces - another old lesson from a witch. One miss poised her wrist with an enchantment, till her friend cowered bent-back into a bridge arcing against the walls.

"Of course people would come! There are some things people want to hear above all else, that will always draw them up and in." The bridge's shadow creaked up into a ledge for monkeys to dangle from. "Right, like _all you can eat buffet!_ " And fall from, if they'd be so thoughtless as to endanger themselves in such a manner. "My, when I said that, I didn't mean the buffet was for _you_ ," the shadow curling into a ball and bouncing straight up as response - it was all nonsense, and it was not why she was here.

"Excuse me!" Her voice, shrill and commanding, cut shadows into two young girls. "Excuse me," repeated in a strange echo - their eyes weren't green, staring through her, but she hated it. She refused it. Nanami strolled in front of the light until her own shadow swallowed the wall ahead. "Are you the only members of your club?"

"It is a duo!" The two flourished arms, fanning out beyond Nanami's silhouette - "That's how it's always been" - and back again, wrapping around - "Anyone can be a part of a pair."

"An official club at Ohtori requires at least five members before rooms can be regularly used for activities." She looked between the girls, both poised as statues, hips flared, ears out and open. Her lips twitched. Dealing with people like this was one pain after another - acting as though every word she said was a mere joke, as though not an ounce of anything that happened at this institution was allowed to matter. "I'm appalled no one has said anything before now!" She had dim memories of girls always playing on the other side of a wall, beyond a thin sheet of paper, impossible to call out of the way. Just - not anywhere she'd thought to reach. Someone like her had other things to hold onto. She used to. "At the very least, request a permit from the headmaster if you're going to use this room for your shows."

"What headmaster?"

" _The_ headmaster," Nanami spat before the chill in her blood could take her words. "I realize everyone thinks playing into some foolish mystery of our school is so interesting, but you can't use it to get out of trouble!"

Too many people had done that. People who always ended up in worse trouble than they could ever imagine. Nanami pressed a hand to her chest and huffed in the resulting silence.

"There's no one but us who uses this room." The two answered with a curious beat, making her heart rate spike again in annoyance. "Not a soul to console, no one comes through." Peppy to haunting in an instant.

"Then be thankful that I've come through." She swung her own hand up, heart fluttering at how her hair bounced against the light. "Not everyone would be so gracious as to allow you another chance. When you have the proper paperwork, you can advertise your play again and hopefully draw in a better crowd."

"Oh, no, I don't think so!" They clasped hands.  "Yes, we have a play every day."

 _Today_ on an old board could have been a week ago. Nanami felt like she ate a lemon. "So the little skit I interrupted?" If the timing could have been right, this once, she dreamed - _only you_ \- she could break this nonsense school.

The two girls bounced toward each other, a thousand words flying over the edge of the earth, as if Japanese was twisting into pure alien babbling, as if the shadow of that old distant forest rose stark beyond rice paper walls, as if a flying saucer had crashed and left them trapped here.

She wondered if they knew.

"Did you like it?" Her spotlight disappeared. "We don't get much of an audience." One of the shadows scurried away with it. "Nanami Kiryuu herself coming to see one of our plays is such an honor!" It could have been sarcastic, so easily - one of the former student council members, one of the (in)famous Kiryuus with reputations that refused to fade, one of the only people she could be sure was still here.

"Of course it's an honor." She rejected the possibility. Someone like her - she fought. "I assume you'd like even more if my brother came." Graduated and gone in the world outside, busy, able to pick and choose who he had in his life.

"Oh no. He wouldn't be able to see." The girls tittered, glancing between each other. "We wanted Tenjou to join." A bouquet passed between them. "She could have, but her problem was always the stage!" One girl planted a single white rose behind Nanami's ear. "She could draw in people, but she couldn't find what she wanted there. Too bad."

"Who is Tenjou?" She had little need for that now, brusquely brushing the bloom from bristling hair. "If I'm unfamiliar with her, I don't see how she would have helped your drama club grow."

"Who knows," one girl, "I wonder," the other. They bowed. "Please see us again tomorrow!"

Today and every day. Nanami sighed. "You have a week before club registration closes." Some names came with an echo, but she could hardly say she had lost anyone. It wasn't as though she'd ever had a true grip on them.

 

\--

 

The End Of The World littered her desk. No letters from Touga, living large as a college bachelor, she thought with a snort. Yet she hadn't brought herself to properly throw away the requests, her name written in spidery cursive, deep golden ink cut into paper.

Rumors could fly everywhere about why she had quit the Student Council years ago. She barely remembered it, now, except for the fact that she _had_ made that choice, and that it would bleed across her future as long as she fought to remain.  There were a dozen easier options, but she wouldn't disappear.

The mirror reflected herself back in threes, as she set herself to memos and notebooks.  It was easy to forget subjects and specialities at Ohtori, swept in the tide of its legacy.  There was Classic Literature, to say the least, more about transformative allegory.  Various mathematics, chemistry, the no-choice elective in botany everyone tried to avoid.  Fencing returned to her life after Arisugawa graduated, for pitiful Miki's sake. She had been told she had potential, her clever senior's pointed smile another attempt to catch Nanami and reel her back into the sport.  There were other things to watch.  Her family's legacy, even if any control would go first to her brother.  Ink dripped from her pen to splatter across the daily reminders, every requirement and quiet secret.  Keeping her fingers dipped in every organization, a favor owed from every name the school had to throw off, and her own name to twist around her as a cloak against those who thought they could use her.

The phone rang.  "Someone please pick that up!" she yelled at an empty house.

It answered with a mocking echo, another tinny ring following her.  She slammed her hands on the desk, shoving her books away, papers floating off and across the room.  Nanami sighed.  It was troublesome, being so important to the world.  A dozen different posters, organizations, information papers, littered the floor.  Horseback riding, modeling requests, photography, the local newspaper, she shuffled them into a pile.  The phone rang.  She sliced her thumb.  Shoving her finger into her mouth, her eyes landed back on one of the letters, a dozen slips of paper falling out.  Her curiosity - she chewed on her thumb.  As she leaned down to pick it up, the house went silent.

 _No one will join if there's no leader_. Disconnected ramblings, separated between a dozen strips.  _There can be no duelists without someone to challenge._ For something so important, there wasn't an edge of formality present. _No one else is left._ The edge of pride cut into her skin at such desperation washing up around her. _We both know we need this_. She could pick up the phone. It would be simple.  She could return a call to the End and demand he beg.   _I have no where else left to turn._ Words he had given a sister before she learned to run. Words to the replacement for a witch.

There was one thing, of anything he could have said to her, that may have persuaded her. Even adults have foolish attachments.  Nanami shoved every slip back inside and threw the club posters on her desk. It was late.  She crawled into bed, shoving the envelope inside her pillow.  If this was so important, she could think about it in the morning. Staring at the wall, her vision warped darkness into people who only existed in shadows in her memory - _You were right, Nanami_ , from someone with long hair and an outdated boy's uniform. Nanami sniffled and yawned.   _Of course_ \- if that girl was still here, she could tell her _I know I'm right - that's why I warned you_. People like Himemiya, people like her brother, people like herself. The sun setting drew longer lines across the floor from her blinds.  Miki playing castanets, Arisugawa sparkling with jewels and presents to bequeath.  Everyone back, done with duels, playing like children for one moment. The shadow of her brother on his knees, begging for her heart back.  She laughed through her drowsiness, mumbling behind her hand, "Never in a thousand years."

The phone rang. The play in her head cut short. Nanami pulled the pillow over her head and waited for it to stop.  Writing self-indulgent plays, hiding from school administration, giving chances to people who weren't supposed to have anymore - she was acting like such a child.  She was supposed to be an adult, at this point.  She was always supposed to have been adult enough. Through the thin fabric, more shadows stretched up her wall from the lamp, balancing along the ceiling.

"I'm the princess of juggling!" Balls bounded toward her, and she caught each one with circuitous grace, cycling every addition between her hands in a frenzy. "My prince told me so, you see." Five, ten, fifteen, till Nanami stopped counting in utter disbelief that more could come. The girl was framed by her strange show, graceful in profile, despite how her feet fumbled from side to side. "He told me only I would do!"

"I'm the princess of seals!" The other shadow slinked along the corner, dragging a tail - feet, Nanami reminded herself - behind her. "A prince made sure to tell me so." The juggler began tossing each of her balls to the seal, the girl, the actor, bouncing every one on her nose in a tower that reached beyond the hold of light. "Only I could do for something as special as this."

The two laughed. "I could go on like this forever!"

A third shadow entered the scene, short curly hair as poised as her hands at her hips. "The two of you are doing the same thing! What's the difference?"

"Because it's juggling - because I'm a seal!"

The third put up a hand to the balls that bounced her way, huffing at their show. "He only said that to make the two of you feel better. But I don't need any titles! I'm his sister. I can do anything I please."

"Really? Really? Isn't that just another title? You're just his sister because he said you were."

The third shadow stomped a foot till the balls fell out of the air, till the seal tumbled away into the juggler's arms. "It's fate! We were granted one another, for all eternity! He could tell someone else that she was the best juggler. Or that she was the only seal in his heart. But that wouldn't make any of it true."

Just a few words she longed to hear - maybe if the End Of The World could believe in them - she knew deeper than she realized how little truth could be found in a brother's words.

"But we believe it!" The juggler picked up the seal, holding her close at her chest. "Who cares if he changes his mind? If he did, it's probably another bureaucracy error."

That defeated the entire point. A small lie to let them go on alone.

"Only a witch tries to live without a prince," the third said. Nanami shuddered in her own right.  She shouldn't fear that, if she had stopped trying to hang onto what she could never have. "If you let go of what's most precious," tilting forward, she would have spoken more, but she fell flat on her face. A river of flopping fish trampled over her, and a dozen more seals chasing after them.

"Look!" The seal looked back to the juggler. "It's an all you can eat buffet!" She held her friend closer. "Just what we were waiting for!"

"Wait a minute!" The twitching shadow on the floor threw up a hand. "What if someone else turns out to be more important?" She didn't know she could be so bad at this acting business. "What if everything turned out to be a lie?"

"I don't know. We're just living as ourselves." They bounced back into the silhouettes of girls.

"Just living as aliens." Another ship trapped in the shadow of that observatory.

"You humans are so weird." Dancing in circles around each other, dresses flaring out, dissolving when the light hit them.

"Turning into cows?" Ringing a bell. "Laying eggs?" Flapping their arms. "What's next, being born from flowers?" Clothes floating to the ground, as one disappeared. "They all look the same." Different swords, different colors, but every bloom came out the same till rotted or dried for show. "Does it matter? Does it matter?" Blood was all the same, except for where it mattered - blood wasn't safe like she needed. "Are you?"

The third yelled - "The only ones who look the same are you shadows!"  Nanami's throat was hoarse.

The phone rang.  Every shadow disappeared, leaving her inexplicably alone - something crashed to the ground, and Nanami was upright, struggling to breathe. No light to illuminate all those terrible people - terrible memories. She sniffled. No one called from outside her room, quiet concern at her lamp breaking. An adult would clean up such a mess on their own - she'd be an adult in the morning.  Nanami pulled the covers over her head. It didn't matter when she'd fallen asleep. Only that she would fall back into slumber.

 _No, I don't think you're the same as all those others_ . She knew the End Of The World could never console her, and that was perhaps the only boon of truth here. _Only you will do, Nanami_.

Every letter ended the same way.  The End Of The World saying _I have no where else to turn_. And a thousand options he'd rather have.

Nanami refused to exist as someone to be settled on.

 

\--

 

"It will be a troupe, from here on out."

The duo crowded around the table, at the papers Nanami spread from side to side - designs for posters, permissions, rules she'd painstakingly transcribed from the absolute nonsense Ohtori filled books and guides with.

"Amazing!"  They popped into parallel poses.  "Just as expected from a former member of the student council!"

A pang shot through her chest, just as much as a wry question of just how long they had been here - how much they knew about the ruins of the student council.

"Of course," instead. "Only I could save your little disaster of a club. Be thankful I've taken such pity on your group. The Kiryuu family is a fond sponsor of the arts!"  Nanami picked up a script, and flourished it before them.  "And as a favor to my family, you'll be putting on a production of this play."

The girl with the headband, she noted, spun a thumb around her chin as she read.  "A kingdom with no children adopts two cows into the royal family?"  She preferred her eyes when they were sparkling, rather than boring through her.  "I love it!"

Nanami laughed, boisterous and tall, her voice reaching far beyond the rafters.  "And I will be happy to play the leading part for your sake."  There was more inside her than blood.

One girl - then two - both their arms wrapped tight around her, till heat rose high in her face. Boiling water around her, trapped in a shell she'd yet to break.

"Thank you!"

"You're just what we were looking for!"

Her heart could have popped in a single moment. It wouldn't - it didn't. "Now, now." Nanami pushed the two of them away, as their arms flapped around her indignantly. "I haven't shown you anything yet." Maybe that was enough. Those words. She wouldn't get her hopes up.

"We're glad to have you!" The girls winked in unison, wide grins stretching with their shadows.

She wondered how much they knew. Such worries weren't worth hanging onto, though. There were some stories that could only be told in the shadows of the world - a witch had taught her that, once, whether she realized or not. Most of them were miserable foolish affairs, filled with covering one's eyes from the truth, throwing yourself into duels, pretending you had a hold on what was never truly yours. Shadow plays had rules.  Yet the shadow girls were strange, complete odd-balls. Their shadows, everything they left behind, were warped into art, rather than something to be forgotten within.

Nanami looked to her shadow, rising strong and tall behind her. Thinking about it, shadows were little more than a trick of the light - watching the darkness you leave behind.   For a young woman in the revolutionized world like her, it was only natural to challenge those rules, too.  She couldn't be beaten out by girls like these.

"Please," she said with a smile. "Take care of me."

**Author's Note:**

> Nanami is a character I'm very fond of, but I had never considered writing her before - however, the prompts my recipient for Yuletide gave were really exciting! I was happy to write something to try to fill that. This didn't turn out as amusingly interesting as Nanami and the Shadow Players are written in-series, but I really really enjoyed writing and thinking about it.
> 
> Perhaps I should indicate that this was pretty influenced by Ikuhara's commentary on episode 32, from the Collector's Edition of the show ... "Everyone needs to hear someone say, _Nobody else will do. It has to be you,_ sometime in their lives, even if it only happens once. Just once is enough. As long as you can feel those words were sincere, you can live through anything, no matter how painful. She's seeking those words, too." That sentiment, especially with regards to Nanami, has always, always stuck with me.
> 
> To my recipient - genuinely, I loved the prompts, and I hope you got even a little enjoyment out of this. Please have lovely holidays and I so hope the new year will be good to you. Thank you!!!


End file.
